From Wikitravel Shared

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It would be nice to have some images of the staff, and more extensive contact details for IB, in this article. Riggwelter 16:41, 25 February 2008 (EST)

Contact details and home page added. Riggwelter 16:47, 25 February 2008 (EST)

[edit] Changes

Hi guys, I wanted to give you a heads up that I will be leaving Internet Brands at the end of the week. It’s been a real pleasure to work with you and I’m truly impressed with the way this community has grown and developed.

Going forward, you can contact Brent Conver (username bconver) for any community issues that come up. The best way to reach him is by email bconver@internetbrands.com.

Of course, you can also contact IB with tech issues and the tech team will continue to monitor the site as always.

Thank you for all your hard work in this community and it’s been my pleasure to be a part of it!

JuCo 19:48, 28 May 2009 (EDT)

Justine, thank you very much for your help. I hope that you will be back as a Wikitraveller. :-) -- Tatata 22:53, 28 May 2009 (EDT)

Well a belated goodbye then :) Brent, please sign up for an account here so we can communicate, we prefer that to be done on-site as much as possible. Can someone give us an update on the tech team, it's been awfully quiet lately and tech requests are mounting. There are several that would take little time and effort, and would allow us to then work on some things ourselves – cacahuate ^talk 20:53, 25 June 2009 (EDT)

I updated the tech contact on this page back in April and it was reverted by Peterfitzgerald. I think this is the source of some of the tech issues not being handled recently. Kevin Hayes is no longer the tech contact for Wikitravel. While he continues to work here at IB, he is in a different role. I am the tech manager for the site. Please do not revert my changes this time. --IB-Dick

Please sign in under your account. We do not trust anonymous edits on important info. That can be why it was reverted. Rein N. 14:38, 23 September 2009 (EDT)

It was not the case, but we had some problems with anonymous edits at that time. --Rein N. 15:00, 23 September 2009 (EDT)

That's correct, I made the edit as myself. I did just, however, re-edit that page without being signed in as myself (like I did earlier). I added our new Community manager IBsteph.

--[User:IB-Dick|IB-Dick]]

[edit] Korean WT

Discussion swept here from en:Wikitravel:Travellers' pub#Korean WT

Why all the Korean stuff happening here on the English WT at the moment. Is there something I've missed? --inas 21:22, 21 September 2009 (EDT)

There was talk just a few weeks ago to get a Korean version started: [[1]] Maybe they are working on translating the main content here before publishing the Korean version. OR maybe they are confused about how to start their own language version. (I myself don't know how to do that) I noticed it, too. ChubbyWimbus 00:23, 22 September 2009 (EDT)

I think this looks like a mistake—the language subdomains make sense for Shared, but the English language policies should be translated on the respective language version. It's possible that he's creating the translations here while waiting for IB to activate the ko version... --Peter ^Talk 00:26, 22 September 2009 (EDT)

We've actually been waiting for several months now, with no response of any kind from IB. Jpatokal 07:29, 22 September 2009 (EDT)

Has anyone tried just calling them up? If IB aren't going to create a language version, is there anything we can actually do to assist, as I don't think creating Korean language articles here much longer is going to work. Can we just hijack the Esperanto version for Korea? --inas 00:16, 23 September 2009 (EDT)

haha. That's not a bad idea. At least Korean is a legitimate language. Of course, that would make it confusing for those going between languages, as they are unlikely to realize that Korean is "eo". ChubbyWimbus 00:53, 23 September 2009 (EDT)

I hate to say this, but maybe the right approach would be to direct them to wikivoyage, and try our best on our end to direct Korean and Turkish users to them, it's sad to see dedicated users, willing to do the work, being thrown of like this - so maybe we can do our best to assist by trying to incorporate links to those two versions on our front page somehow.

Also, We've obviously reached a complete stalemate as far as development of our platform is concerned, so maybe it's time to take a long hard look at this, and also consider talking to the active users on our German and Italian versions, about relocating those versions to wikivoyage, as they already have active communities there - we could do that by putting a big fat notice up on the front page directing users there, and then shut down editing for unregistered users.

I still think we stand to loose too much abandoning the English version as long as things is at a functioning state, but active collaboration with wikivoyage atleast gives us an escape route, and maybe seeing wikitravel+voyage as a whole community, that spans across two websites, is not a bad thing, as it gives us a chance to progress, rather than stale. --Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 05:17, 23 September 2009 (EDT)

That's a gloomy message Stefan. I have not been around here very long so it would be good to know the state of play with IB. I guess it is that relationship where the feeling of "stalemate" and talk of "escape routes" emanates from? Maybe that is a discussion to be had in another topic. --Burmesedays 07:36, 23 September 2009 (EDT)

Don't know, I think it's pretty straightforwardly relevant for the topic. I know this is potentially off putting for new contributors, so I don't take it lightly writing like that - at all. But since IB can't spare the the very limited time it takes to register a sub-domain, and then flick a few switches to get them started, I find it necessary for us to come up with alternatives. Might have come out a bit too gloomy... just trying to break the taboo, and find practical way forward - "one community, two websites" is an idea I really find attractive, the more I think about it. If we can find a way to make it work - since English WT constitutes the vast majority of traffic, IB might not feel to threatened if we relocated a few languages over there. --Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 08:06, 23 September 2009 (EDT)

/edit: oh, misunderstood your message, it's fairly simple, any technical changes are off limits since IB doesn't want to dedicate any staff time to us, and we don't have the necessary access. It's not as bad as it sounds though, since most things in a Wiki is customizable by users and admins, we are pretty self contained for the most part. --Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 08:17, 23 September 2009 (EDT)

We can start the process of creating this new language version today. I apologize for the delay, but this is the first I've heard of a Korean language version. I had replaced Kevin Hayes with myself as the tech contact for this site on the IB page back back in April, but that change was reverted. Unfortunately, it's not as simple as flipping a few switches, as each language is a separate install of this very customized version of MediaWiki. It will take some time, but we can get the ball rolling. Have all the necessary translations been made, or will they be done after the creation? --IB-Dick

Hey Dick, while it goes against convictions that throwing a hissy should actually work, well - at least it worked, and thanks a bunch for responding, we've missed you guys over the last year. Users have been gathered for a starting up Turkish and a Korean versions. Both have already done much translation work, but I'm not sure if they have done so correctly - also the Turkish team might have lost interest by now - we can try to contact them by email maybe. Another pressing issue is the license upgrade, which got rolling back in January 2008, but we still haven't gotten an official response from IB yet (see wts:Talk:License_upgrade) - there a bunch of other issues that we would like merely to get a yes or no to - like enabling range blocks and disabling uploads outside shared, any chance you could look into those? --Stefan (sertmann) ^Talk 14:03, 23 September 2009 (EDT)

I think I reverted your replacement—my apologies. I worried that it might have been vandalism. Thank you for introducing yourself now.

If others don't mind, I'd like to see this discussion moved to shared:Talk:Internet Brands ASAP. The less pleasant aspects of WT politics can and have been very off putting for newer users unacquainted with the history of said politics. I'm not proposing that we "hide" these types of discussions—I'd just rather see them take place on Shared, where we coordinate inter-lang & meta issues, and where the readers of those discussions will be more aware of these types of issues. --Peter ^Talk 14:28, 23 September 2009 (EDT)

I just want to give a quick update on this. Creating a new language version is kind of a process and since we haven't done it for a while we want to pay extra attention to the details involved. We're working on getting this set up on the development server right now. I just need to know what the directory is going to be for this? --Dick

We use Wikimedia codes for languages as far as I'm aware, so Korean should be /ko sertmann 20:24, 28 September 2009 (EDT)

Update: the Korean version has been completed in staging and we will be pushing it live soon--Steph 3:57 pm, 30 September 2009 (EDT)

hey everyone, great news : the Korean version is live! Can you please let me know who the bureaucrats are for that site so that we can set up their permissions? Please post your replies here and our Dev team will keep an eye on this thread- thanks!--Steph4:26 pm, 20 October 2009

While you're at it, please also set up Turkish (tr), which has also been pending for ages. Jpatokal 23:09, 28 September 2009 (EDT)

I've sent emails to all the expeditions members (except one that did not have a email) asking them to elect a bureaucrat at Wikitravel_Shared:Administrator_nominations, after MkPaulos failed nomination, will post you on the results as soon as they get in. sertmann 19:47, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

Does any of the Japanese admins know some Korean? or do we have any English teachers who've worked in Korea who could assume bureaucrat role until one is elected? Or should we just choose a temporary caretaker (Jani, Peter, Me?) until this have been settled? sertmann 19:52, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

We should have a community bureaucrat anyway. Please feel free to nominate yourself or someone else. --Peter ^Talk 21:54, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

[edit] Issues

OpenID login [2] is broken sertmann 19:59, 20 October 2009 (EDT)

"Database::selectField"
MySQL은 "1146: Table 'wikitravel_org_-_ko.user_openid' doesn't exist (wikidb)

• Main page should go here, not to "Main_page" (<-English)

I filed a bug report with my two issues and put issues above into it. I'd like to move tech requests here to bug tracking tool, since I feel that mediawiki doesn't fit to manage them for developers and community support staffs. Does IB have their standard tool like bugzilla, launchpad or sourceforge ? -- Tatata 22:12, 20 October 2009 (EDT)